The Tree's Chant
by Sempiternus
Summary: One-shot. Roy and Riza. “What do you dream about?” she whispered into the silence of the room, the black interim of inky breezes.


**The Tree's Chant**

_By Sempiternus_

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Summary: (One-shot. Roy and Riza.) Just a simple moment in time between two people in the dead of the night.

Author's Note: Written at five o'clock in the morning when I couldn't fall asleep no matter how hard I strove to. I tried to keep them in character as much as I could.

Disclaimer: I do not own nor am trying to receive any profit from _Fullmetal Alchemist._

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Gutiri gukura na kurara keri.

One ages every night one lives.

–Kikuyu proverb

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All Riza could see when she opened her eyes were black shapes dancing on the dim ceiling. It took a moment for reality to sustain its footing in her jumbled mind and settle into its place. Slowly, her senses awakened to the sounds around her: A light breeze ruffling the curtains covering the slightly ajar window, a bundle of covers at her arms, and the low voice of the figure sleeping beside her. Riza realized what had awoken her in the middle of the night.

A dog's bark echoed from the distance as she turned her body on its side and rested her clouded vision upon the sweat-soaked person. Roy was tossing his legs back and forth unconsciously, arms scratching up and down the sheets covering the bare mattress as if they couldn't figure out how to soothe themselves. As Riza watched, concern etched its way onto her usually stone face. Occurrences like this took place far more commonly than she would have been able to endure if she didn't share the same past as the afflicted man beside her.

Roy's voice was low, so low Riza was unable to patch together the jumble of his nightmare. Just as she was about to extend her hand up to shake the suffering heart of her lover, his body jerked on its own and eyes as dark as the shadowed ceiling shot up to face the blank wall opposite the bed. Roy's panting filled the silence of the room like a curse, a spell continuously cast over the both of them. A curse that, in the recesses of her mind, Riza referred to as a rabid animal who would never release their hearts from its screaming prison.

Time stirred in a never-ending void as Roy's panting began to calm down. When he finally let out a troubled sigh and laid down flat on his back, Riza allowed herself to rest her hand on the right side of his face. When she did so, Roy's midnight eyes closed once again, and his face melted into the cup of her hand. Riza shifted her body closer to his and brought her other hand up to stroke one of his weary arms.

"What do you dream about?" she whispered into the silence of the room, the black interim of inky breezes.

Roy sighed once more, and then, in a flash of alertness it seemed to Riza, his distinguishing slanted eyes opened. Turning his body to be in line with hers, he grasped the hand that had been resting on his face and kissed it for its patience.

"Everything I could do over again," he muttered in return, partly into the open hand. Locking his eyes with hers, he continued, "Another time, a different choice. I dream of everything that _could_ have happened."

"Never what did?" Her sharp voice pierced into the hushed atmosphere surrounding them.

Roy frowned, not at her, but at his frustration of putting thoughts into words. "If I dreamt about what did happen, then I would have to accept that nothing will ever change."

"Change is can lead to good, can't it?"

"I suppose. Changing, turning, or even stopping time are all _good_ things that all humans _wish_ they could do. Those _are_ the things I dream of, though, foolish as it is." He turned back over and positioned his head adjacent to the ajar window, inscribing his gaze onto the night sky. "Rotating time backwards"—his hand raised to clutch as the nickel-sized moon just a few steps, it seemed, from their bed—"and fixing a moment in time." The hand clenched into a fist, froze in its place for a moment, before Roy brought the hand up to his face and allowed it to travel a familiar passage through his hair, resting it at the top of the pillow. A tree rustled just outside the window, chanting the night's painful melody, and Roy let the sound wash over his being before turning his gaze back to Riza's accepting and thoughtful expression. A grin spread over Roy's face. "Change is what keeps me going. The good, the bad. The _possibilities."_ He rotated his body once more, and lowered his mouth to the rhythmic pulse of Riza's neck. _"You're_ what keeps me going," he confided into her shivering skin.

"I'm just here to protect your back," Riza muttered after a pause, the tips of her lips raising upward.

"Mmm . . . really," Roy replied, bringing his face up level to hers and laying a hand on her cheek.

"_Really,"_ she mimicked to the calm surrounding them, the vacuum of space that seemed to cease everything when they were together. The mood encircling them was warm, and if Riza had to describe it as a color, she would chose the blue of the night sky, the only time she could witness the glowing moon illuminate Roy's deep eyes and guide her through the stormy passage to the real Roy.

The night moves in its own epoch of time, adhering to no rules of the clock. Trees rustled, dogs howled, but as Roy held Riza in his arms, and Riza laid calloused hands around him, they wouldn't have to wake to dark shadows playing never-ceasing games on the walls around their room. When they awoke next, the sun would be shining brightly enough to leave the shadows trailing behind the both of them. It would shine brightly for Roy and Riza for at least one more day, hiding their coveting phantasms from view. However, as the day darkened into dusk, their connected hearts would be illuminated only by a watchful moon and stars beating in tune to the tree's chant of the dark sky.

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_8 June 2008_


End file.
